


from the roots of my soul

by PilotInTheStars



Category: Ant-Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Birthday Party, Character Study, Complicated Father Daughter Relationships, F/M, Flashbacks, Hope's POV, Post Break Up, Post-Ant-Man (2015), Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Pre-Ant-Man and the Wasp (2018), Trader Joes Wine, a birthday party for ants that is, did you think ant man resolved the issues between hope and hank too quickly? me too, scott and hope are bi and unemployed and going through it, there's the vaguest reference to sex if you squint but it's why it's a teen rating, you really have to squint tho
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-29
Updated: 2020-09-29
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:09:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26714257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PilotInTheStars/pseuds/PilotInTheStars
Summary: That was Hope Van Dyne. She always picked herself up. She always put one foot in front of the other. But it was exhausting time and time again.---The two years in between Captain America: Civil War and Ant-Man and the Wasp from Hope's point of view.
Relationships: Hank Pym & Hope Van Dyne, Hope Van Dyne & Janet Van Dyne, Scott Lang/Hope Van Dyne, hope van dyne - Relationship
Comments: 6
Kudos: 18





	from the roots of my soul

**Author's Note:**

> I really love the Ant-Man movies. I really love Hope. It was about time I wrote fic.
> 
> Having to go on the run with her father who she just recently made peace with? Breaking up her boyfriend who just took the Ant-Man suit to Germany and made the three of them criminals? Working to save her mother? Hope's got a lot to deal with.
> 
> Title is a line from "The Child is Gone" by Fiona Apple because, well, it just IS Hope's song in my mind, especially during Ant-Man.
> 
> A special thank you to @sharknana29 for her wonderful beta-ing expertise. <3

Often, things were truly too good to be true. 

That’s how the past few couple of months had felt like- some kind of fairytale that you just knew you were going to wake up from. Hope had loved stories like that when she was a little girl, until after her mother disappeared, when she was alone, raising herself in some far off boarding school, and then realizing that there were no fairytales in this world. 

And now, here she was, yet again, with the cheap brand of wine she always kept stored in the cupboards in her apartment, and realizing over her second glass that she had been completely and utterly foolish. 

In all honesty, she wanted to cry. She wanted to go to the shower and sob and in the best case scenario, her neighbors in the apartment building wouldn’t hear her. 

But if there was a good way for Hope to prevent herself from crying, it was just simply doing. 

_She couldn’t stay here._

That got her on her feet right away. A quick scan of the closets in her apartment and she found a bag. She was an efficient packer- it wasn’t like she owned much to begin with. She could have fit a bit much more in a larger pack, but best not to set off alarm in anyone. Don’t let anyone ask you questions. She had taken this bag on business trips before, if someone was reviewing the security cameras right now, they wouldn’t suspect anything. 

_The authorities would certainly be reviewing them in a couple hours, once the FBI was on her trail._

Hope snapped the clasps on her duffel bag and froze, remembering that it was Scott that had taught her about the security cameras, when they had been planning the heist at Pym Tech. 

And then the tears finally reached her eyes and she stormed out of the room. 

* * *

When she turned the corner on the street where the Pym residence once stood, the house was already gone. 

_Fuck._ Hank was two steps ahead. 

Hope didn’t want to panic. She didn’t. But the thought of facing the rest of her life on the run with absolutely no one else was enough to make her panic. 

_But the thought of having to turn to her father for something still was enough to make her both angry and sick at the same time._

She drove past where the house used to be, and one handedly reached into her purse for her phone. 

_God, what did she say?_

She was just going to have to roll with it. 

Hope dialed Hank’s number and waited for him to pick up. 

It rang four times. 

“Hope?”

Hope took a breath. “Hi.” 

“You’re late.”

_What in hell was he talking about?_

“Meet me by the old doughnut shop.”

 _Of course she would know exactly what he was talking about._ She had memories of that place- of her mother taking her when she was a girl. 

It’s the last place she really wanted to go right now, but she did it anyway. 

She rummaged in the back of her car and found a newspaper about 6 months old and she casually looked up as Hank placed something in the backseat. Hope stared at it for a second as he got into the passenger seat. 

“Is that the _lab_?” 

“I’ll explain later. For now, we have to go.” 

_You didn’t have to tell me that. I’m not an idiot._

Hope had more emotions right now than she could count, and in all honesty, she wanted to tell him to shut up, but she couldn’t figure out how to say it without sounding like a teenage girl again, angry at the world. Every time she ran through the words in her head, she sounded 16, not 35. 

“We’ll go to the woods,” Hank said. 

She wanted to cry, but she couldn’t. She held her composure as they sat in silence and drove them out to the woods. She kept it together. That’s what she had always done.

* * *

They found a clearing in the woods. Hope parked the car off to the side, and then walked over to where Hank stood in the field. He had placed the tiny building on the grass and was fiddling with a remote.

“Did you shrink the lab?”

Hank grunted. 

“How long has this been possible?”

“A while.” 

Hope blinked.

“Don’t you think that would be kind of important to tell me? Considering… we were working in the same building?”  
Hank pressed a button and the lab immediately grew from the size of a relatively small dollhouse to a full building. Hope’s mind was reeling enough that she didn’t even flinch.

Her father walked into the building and she followed. 

“Don’t you think it would be kind of important for me to know that?”

“I didn’t think we’d need it.”

Hope took a deep breath, trying to not lose it now, as they went up to the lab. 

“ _Then why did you set it up?_ ”

“This tech in the wrong hands can lead to catastrophic effects. Stark Industries would happily weaponize if they could. Granted, I didn’t think we would have to worry about it, it’s best to be cautious. Thought Stark was too busy wrapped up in his own head and plans… and now.” 

Hope waited for it. Waited for him to bring up Scott. How they never should have trusted him. 

But Hank didn’t say anything. 

She wanted him to, and in a weird way, maybe she would make sense of all the feelings in heart. 

_Her mind flashed back to her last phone call with Scott. She supposed that truly was the end of it for them._

_She didn’t want to say goodbye, but she couldn’t deny how upset she felt in her heart. What an idiotic move, to run off to Germany with the suit and not tell them?_

She thought bitterly, _And now we’re all criminals, Scott._

Hope couldn’t stop feeling deep, sad things in her heart.

* * *

If she saw Scott- _Ant-Man-_ anymore, she thought she truly would lose her mind. She turned off the small television after the reporter announced Hope Van Dyne and Hank Pym in the list of those who were in violation of the Sokovia Accords. 

They didn’t say a word to each other after that, but she explored the lab and found an empty room with an old folded up cot. 

Hope knew that Hank had bought the building shortly after the destruction of Pym Tech. She vaguely remembered a conversation over dinner about it, when Scott had been over. 

_If I’m voted out of my own company, and then the building’s destroyed, I might as well reinvest into something new._

She and Scott had just glanced at each other.

_Apparently you’ve been thinking about this for a while, huh, Hank?_

It was old man paranoia, she supposed. The way he made sure all the doors were locked at night. Double checked the car to make sure nothing had been stolen. Installed entire buildings with shrinking features in case a scientific rival wanted to steal your technology. 

The skeleton of the quantum tunnel stood in the lab- the tunnel that Hank and Hope had been working on for the past couple of months. 

_I suppose we’ll have plenty of time to work on it now,_ Hope thought drily, as she walked over to the other side. She stopped in her tracks. 

_The Wasp suit._ It had also been their project the past few months. Hope walked up to it, that imposing figure, to that imposing legacy. 

She thought of her mother, and immediately had to turn away. 

She couldn’t think of Janet Van Dyne right now. 

* * *

_Scott had called her once early in the afternoon._

_“Can I come over to use your oven?”_

_Hope couldn’t help but raise a brow._

_“Uh, why?”_

_“The oven at the apartment is kind of horrible. It shuts off randomly, we need to look into it, but…” She could imagine him waving a hand. “Money for that is kind of tight at the moment and the landlord doesn’t like us.”_

_“Yes, it’s fine to come over then.”_

_“Do you have milk in the fridge?”_

_Hope walked to the kitchen and checked, turning the half-gallon to check the expiration date. “Yep.”_

_“Great! See you in an hour?”_

_“I’ll see you then.”_

_She still had no idea why he needed to bake a cake in the first place. A thought crossed her mind._

_Was it his daughter’s birthday? She didn’t think so- surely that would have come up in conversation. And if it had, surely she hadn’t forgotten about it._

_Scott arrived an hour later with a knock on the door and Hope went to open it. He held up a bag and grinned._

_“Wait... Are you making a birthday cake for..?”_

_“The ants? Then yes.”_

_“Scott, I thought you were joking about that.”_

_He took a step inside. “It was just too sad, Hope. You don’t know_ any _of their birthdays?”_

_“I guess not.”_

_Scott gestured to the bag again. “Then we’ll just have a big birthday party.”_

_It’s a boxed cake mix and a can of frosting but somehow the gesture is so… sincere that it does warm Hope’s heart a bit. She’s always been a shitty cook, but the two of them could figure out a boxed cake mix just fine, and they did so._

_Hope hopped up on her counter and Scott put the spatula in the sink._

_“You know, I got worried about what ants could actually eat. Googled it all last night, until I realized that… Well, don’t ants eat just about anything? At the very least, I hope they like this.”_

_Hope looked at him. “So I suppose we’re making this the ants’ official birthday?”_

_“Well if neither you and Hank remember it.”_

_Hope couldn’t help but laugh. “You know, I got worried that it was Cassie’s birthday and I had forgotten…”_

_Scott shook his head. “Not for a couple months.”_

_“She’ll be… nine?”_

_Scott nodded. “God, I missed a lot of years.”_

_Hope felt her heart pang. “It’s okay. You’re here now for her. There’s time.”_

_“There is.”_

_They sat in silence and something about it was peaceful, almost intimate. At some point, he ended up in her embrace, the two of them together, until the oven went off and startled them both._

_They took it to the lab and gave it to the ants the next day. A huge mess had been made, and they had to go out and buy a broom to sweep up the crumbs in the lab before Hank had a conniption and it was so ridiculous that Hope still found herself smiling the next day._

* * *

Hope woke up with that happy memory, a smile on her face, and then sat up in bed, cold and alone. 

With a frustrated sigh, she lay back down, pulling the covers tighter around her, hoping to bite off the chill. 

But nothing could quite get rid of the ache that she felt inside. 

_She missed him. She missed him so badly._

But what else did she miss? Freedom. And Scott was the reason it was gone now, for her and her father, and she wasn’t sure where to start in ever forgiving him. 

* * *

_Hope was sitting with her mother._

_Her mother was older, but her eyes, her smile were still the same. It hadn’t changed at all._

_Hope couldn’t find it in her to ask everything she wanted to._

Do you remember me? Do you recognize me now? Have you missed me as much as I’ve missed you?

_There was so much she wanted to tell her. But she couldn’t find her voice, even when her lips parted to speak._

_Her mother stood up from her chair and parted without a word._

* * *

Hope woke up lonely and sad and missing her mother. It was a familiar feeling after all these years.

_Mom, I hope we find you._

As she laid there in bed, she realized how crushed she would be, to spend all this time building the quantum tunnel and prepping and planning for that brief moment. 

And she ached. 

Hope looked over at the clock that sat by her bed. Three in the morning. It wasn’t going to do her good now to just lay around.

She dressed and went down to the lab to work. If she was distracted, she could stop herself from thinking about it all. That was how Hope Van Dyne had worked for years.

* * *

Trips to the outside world were few and far between. Get in, get out, before anyone recognized who you were and called the authorities. Pay in cash. 

They needed batteries and bread, which Hope quickly picked up, but not before ducking into an aisle and grabbing the nearest pair of hairclips she could find. 

She had started to grow her hair out again- it wasn’t like she could go get a trim now, and growing her hair out again at least changed her look a little bit. 

Her bob had grown out just enough that it reached her shoulders, but it still wasn’t long enough to tie back, and it fell in her face enough that she just about couldn’t stand it anymore. 

Absentmindedly, in the lab’s bathroom, she grabbed the barrettes and clipped them into her hair to keep it out of her face before she went to work on the quantum tunnel. 

Hope took a glance at herself in the mirror and couldn’t help but give a laugh, shocked by the pastel pink hair clips. She realized that she probably should have picked a different color but yet she saw the young girl she had been, a very long time ago. 

_Up against the world, even when it’s beating you down._

That was Hope Van Dyne. She always picked herself up. She always put one foot in front of the other. But it was exhausting time and time again.

* * *

_Hope cut her hair for the first time in boarding school. It had grown long for years, with an occasional trim from a friend’s mother when she was invited to visit, after the mandatory “your hair is too unruly” she received from everyone’s parents._

_It was the most impulsive of impulsive decisions- here, late at night in the dormitory bathroom, a pair of scissors in hand, tears streaming down her face, completely controllable._

_Her father had been distant again during their monthly phone call. But what was new? He was always distant. He never gave a shit._

_She snipped angrily until the hair on her head reached her shoulders and the floor was littered with what she had cut._

_Hope cleaned it up best she could, shoving it down in the trash can where no one could find it. She’d walk out and go to class the next morning, hair uneven and wonky, but feeling like part of a weight had been left behind._

* * *

Living in the lab was awkward. There was no other way around it. Hope and Hank spent most days skirting around each other, not getting in the other’s way as they did what they needed for the quantum tunnel. 

Hope went to the store when they needed something. It got her out of the house, and the chance to even say two words to someone other than the father she didn’t get along with to begin with. 

He’d also sent her along for errands to gain materials for the quantum tunnel. Most of the parts came from a man named Sonny Burch, who she most definitely did not trust in the slightest. That would come back to bite them back later. 

And then she would return, back to their hidden away lab, to the silence of it all. 

_Things had been somewhat okay. For a bit. Before all this happened._

_You worked your way up to chairwoman just to vote him out, Hope. You haven’t had a normal relationship since you were a kid. Nothing’s ever going to be fixed._

In some ways, she really felt like that hurt little girl again. Desperate for any kind of attention, any kind of comfort when her mother had been ripped from her. 

If this was how the rest of her life was going to be, she hated it.

* * *

Hope walked into the lab to find Hank looking over two figures on the lab table. 

_Two suits._

“Dad-” 

Hank looked up from the table. “Well, I said we should finally get to work on this. It’s been a while and… we might need it.”

Hope looked down on the Wasp suit, still not complete, but closer to completion than it had been the first time she’d seen it, almost a year ago now. 

She nodded. “Though I’m a bit more curious about this…” She gestured to the skeleton of a new suit. She recognized the pattern. 

_A new Ant-Man suit._

“Well, if Scott is going to destroy my life’s work and I have plenty of spare time on my hands… I might as well make a new one.”

Hope stared at it for a moment, then walked to the other side of the table to look down at the Wasp suit. 

“What needs to be done?” 

* * *

_To say Hope was a perfectionist was a bit of an understatement. She remembered her failures vividly, her successes often forgotten fast._

_Her whole life felt like a constant drive towards something._

_But towards what?_

_Proving herself, perhaps. Defending her mother’s legacy. Showing up her father._

_That was her drive for years._

_She was in the top of her class in boarding school and at university. She was hired by Pym Tech on her own merit._

_And somehow that drive changed all in a matter of months._

_She had watched Pym Tech go up in flames. The Wasp suit, now all hers, was being worked on. And Scott had most certainly wormed his way into her affections._

_The walls she had built around herself had seemed to come down, for a few short months. And now she was struggling to not build them all up again._

* * *

Hope felt like shit. They had had a breakthrough, and now it was gone. 

The quantum tunnel had finally begun to take its shape; the ants were busy workers. Everything in the coding and the wiring had been successful. 

So why had it gone so terribly today?

_One step forward and two steps back to finding her mother again._

If she was any more stable emotionally, she would have shrugged it off. They’d go back tomorrow and rework through the issue. 

But neither of them quite knew where to go, and it felt like every minute they spent working on the project was less of a chance they’d ever get her mother back. 

Hank never strayed from character, grumbling to himself and going to consult whatever he had written down on the papers on his desk. But it was late. There was no finding a solution tonight. 

Hope had gone down to the lab’s kitchenette and grabbed a bottle of wine, an unsmart decision, but she couldn’t give a damn right now. 

She filled her wine glass a little too full and found her way back in the main room of the lab. Hank had disappeared, probably to go and do his own sulking. _Like father, like daughter,_ she thought bitterly. 

Her eyes couldn’t be torn away from the quantum tunnel. 

_What are we going to do?_

Hope walked over to the desk, glancing over the stacks of papers there. Sketches, notes, equations… Maybe she’d have a breakthrough at some point. She set her wine glass down on one of the only clear spots on the desk, and began to shuffle through the masses of paper.

Her finger hit something hard, something wooden. She pulled out a picture frame, which contained a photo of a couple holding a bundle at a park. She didn’t need a prompt to know who it was. 

And then the tears came. 

She found herself sat up against the quantum tunnel, currently lacking energy and functionality. It could be a backrest for now. To 

be honest, she was a little more tipsy than she ever usually was, maybe from both alcohol and emotions. And now, she couldn’t stop crying. 

_Pretty embarrassing, Van Dyne._

She missed her mother. She missed Scott. And _God,_ she missed her freedom _._ She wanted something desperately to go right. 

Hope was never one to sit in her own self pity. She acted on whatever she felt. But now, it was all she could seem to do was wallow. 

At some point, she realized that Hank had gone and sat down at the chair at the desk, sitting quietly, and she considers telling him to “fuck off” for so long that she’ll later not recall if the words left her mouth or not.

And now she felt even more embarrassed than before. She didn’t think he’d be coming back up to the lab. Now she just wanted to hide. She felt like she was five again, crying because she had knocked over a vase in the hall and didn’t know what to do. 

The seconds felt like hours. 

“Maybe you should go to bed.” It was all he said, enough for her to stop and stare at him oddly, and he stood up to leave. 

Hope found her way to her room in the lab eventually, and when she woke up the next morning, a little hungover and in deep regret she thought: 

_Why the hell did I act like I did last night?_

And for all of Hank’s flaws, he knew what to do then. And maybe she was grateful for that. Just maybe.

* * *

_They were at her apartment. That bright morning sunshine, characterized by the summer. They were in her bed too and Hope could feel through her pajama shirt the warmth of his arm gently placed across her back. She couldn’t remember the last time she slept in this late, but she didn’t mind in the slightest._

_Scott had surprised her at her apartment that night, and she was pretty surprised to see him there._

_“Sorry, I just…” He rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly. “It’s been a really long day, it’s lonely back at the apartment…”_

_Hope stepped aside and let him in._

_They found themselves on the couch._

_“Going to a bank when you’re a famed thief in San Francisco is about the opposite of enjoyable,” Scott said._

_“Even when you helped stop a deadly crazed businessman?”_

_“Yeah, even then. Hank said he still needed to pay me back for my help, and my account was frozen after my arrest. I said he could PayPal me, but Hank doesn’t know what a PayPal is,” Scott said, rubbing his eyes with his hands. “Hope, I don’t think I actually know anyone who still uses checks._

_“And then when I bring a check written by a renowned scientist into the bank and try and deposit it…”_

_He sounded defeated._

_“I’m glad all the child support was paid off.”_

_“I am too. Tell Hank I said thank you, I… I truly don’t know how I would have paid it all off without him. The only problem is that I’m stuck not knowing how to continue paying it.”_

_Hope could feel the worriedness in his voice. The worry about not being able to fulfill the next payment and not being allowed to see Cassie again._

_“If there’s anything I could do to help, Scott…”_

_Scott shook his head. “I think it’ll be okay.” He smiled at her and it did funny things to her heart._

_“None of us have been doing well on the job front, so Luis and I had the idea to take matters into our own hands.”_

_Hope stared. “In what way?”_

_“In the way of X-Con Security Consultants.” He saw her raised brows and continued. “Who better to buy security from than the guys who know how to beat it? Think about it- we know the best systems. We know how to make the most effective security. It’s worth a shot- if no one else will hire us.”_

_Hope was the first person Scott brought to tour the little office they bought for X-Con, the week before it all went wrong. The week before Scott went to Germany and it all fell apart. Before the bones of a new life had been shattered entirely._

* * *

The first time Hope brought the Wasp suit somewhere, she felt a strange sense of glee. It sat, shrunken, in the pocket of her coat, the one she’d been wearing ever since a chill had settled over San Francisco. 

It was another meeting with Sonny Burch, with money and parts for the quantum tunnel exchanged underneath the well-decorated restaurant table. 

Burch constantly put her on edge with his constant questions and interrogation disguised as polite small talk. She couldn’t wait to be out of there. 

The part hidden away, she walked outside and climbed into the van where her father sat in the driver’s seat. Sunglasses were perched on his nose. 

“Do you have the part for the quantum tunnel?”

Hope reached under her coat and held the part in her hand as Hank began to drive away. “It’s here.”

“And he accepted the money?”

“Sonny’s a businessman, he’ll accept any money.” 

Hank didn’t answer for a moment thinking. “Yes, but even the most greedy businessman is going to question where the money comes from eventually.” 

“We’ll just have to pray it doesn’t get to that.”

_The sooner they were done with this quantum tunnel, the better._

* * *

_Hope knew that he shared an apartment with his three friends, the three who had helped them with the heist at Pym Tech. They had recently moved after a small bonus from Hank._

_“We’re all at odd jobs right now,” Scott said. “They’re in and out throughout the night.”_

_However, she wasn’t expecting all of them to be here, now, when she was trying to leave._

_“Do you want waffles?” she hears from the kitchen, recognizing Luis’ voice._

_What was she supposed to say?_

_She turned the corner to see Luis, managing a few plates of Eggo toaster waffles. The toaster went off, and he added the two waffles to a plate._

_“Uh, sure?”_

_“Sprinkles or chocolate chips?”_

_“Sprinkles are the superior addition to waffles,” someone called from the living room- Dave. He was sitting next to Kurt with a bowl of cereal in hand. They were watching some cartoon on the dinky television._

_“I’m fine without any. Thank you.” Luis handed the plate of waffles to her, a bewildered look on her face._

_The door to Scott’s room opened._

_“Scotty! Your girlfriend doesn’t take any toppings on her waffles.”_

_Scott walked out into the space, half-asleep and surprised that Hope was still there, even when she had said her goodbyes, and now the fact that she didn’t take any toppings on her waffles._

_“What do you mean?”_

_“She eats the waffles plain straight from the toaster, bro!”_

_Scott stared at Hope, and the look he gives her is enough to make her almost laugh. “You think you know a person.”_

_The boys argued about toppings a bit more, until Hope and Scott finally made their way to the front door of the apartment. Scott closed it, and there they were, standing on the landing, together._

_“Next time?”_

_“Yeah?”_

_“We might want to consider my place instead,” Hope said._

* * *

Hope is startled by her own laughing at the memory, and she had to leave the lab because she couldn’t hide it. It felt good to not be aching at the thought of it. 

Maybe it wasn’t complete happiness, but it was contentedness, and that was something too. 

* * *

It had been a year of being on the run and she wouldn’t have even remembered if every news channel in the country hadn’t spoken about the anniversary of the airport battle. She was forced to sit through watching it again, despite remembering it all fairly clearly.

_A year since freedom. A year since Scott._

Hope didn’t know how to feel about it all, if she was to be honest. She felt strange in a way she couldn’t describe. She wished she could talk to someone, anyone. But the only other person there was Hank, and Hope thought she’d rather pass away than try to talk to him about that. 

* * *

The next year was one of the calmest of Hope’s life, strangely enough. They found a routine. They learned how to stay out of trouble best they could. 

The quantum tunnel was near completion, the Wasp suit done, the new Ant-Man suit a work in progress. 

She felt better in a strange new way, working towards finding her mother, becoming the Wasp. 

There was a new sense of clarity for most things. 

* * *

Hope apparently learned a lot about thievery from Scott, as she was pretty sure she used everything he had taught her when planning the heist at Pym Tech. 

Maybe before she’d dwell on it, but she chose not to now. 

“Hope,” her father said through the comms of the Wasp suit, “do you have the part?”

Hope glanced down at her hand. “It’s here.” She placed it in the pouch on her suit and immediately shrunk down to size, flying off to wherever the car was located. 

The gray van was sitting in the alley and the passenger seat window was open a smidge. Hope flew in and grew large again, sitting in the passenger seat. 

She reached into her pocket. “Got it.” 

Hank took off, not saying anything. It was awkward. He shrunk the van down. 

“That’s good, isn’t it?” 

“Well, considering we only need one more part… It’s good.”

It was only a short drive to the lab to where it sat in the city, a risk, but it made their lives easier. 

The van grew to regular size and Hank got out of the van. Hope followed him into the lab.

He wouldn’t look at her.

“Hey, what is your issue?”

Hank continued off into the inner part of the lab. Hope followed. 

“I can’t lose you too, Hope.” 

Hope couldn’t find the words for a moment. She broke eye contact. “Then I’m in the same boat- I can’t really lose anyone else either right now, and I don’t want to lose you either. But if this is how we get Mom back, I don’t see another option. _I_ chose to be the Wasp. It was my choice, I can very well decide for myself. I’ve put my life at risk for a lot of things, what’s different now?”

Hank considered for a moment and didn’t add on. 

“I see too much of your mother in you.” 

It was almost a shock. She wasn’t sure she had ever heard herself be compared to her mother before in her life. 

No one wanted to speak of Janet Van Dyne, even when her presence seemed to loom over everything Hope did. Sometimes she even seemed a distant memory in her own daughter’s mind, like someone she imagined in a dream. Hank, on the other hand, she was always compared to. 

_His stubbornness. His willingness to throw a punch. His sheer iron will._

And to hear herself be compared to her mother… In a weird way, it felt relieving. 

“She said the same thing. You echo her in many ways. And…” He gave a sigh. “I can’t lose my daughter forever and have it be my own damn fault. I lost you once and it’s a miracle you ever came back. For you to permanently be gone, with your mother, I don’t think my heart could take it. The Wasp suit’s caused me enough pain and strife… and seeing you in it? I get worried. It’s like seeing your mother all over again.”

“But she’d want us to try, wouldn’t she?”

Hank nodded. “She would. And we will.”

* * *

“Are we ready?” Hank asked. 

“There’s not much else we can do to double check now.”

Hope flipped the switch and powered on the quantum tunnel. The lights turned on. Energy flowed through its veins. 

And then it shut off.

They sat in defeated silence for a moment, unsure of where to go from there. 

And then the phone rang.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!


End file.
